


The Highwayman of Cornwall

by dandelionpower



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Return to Treasure Island (TV 1996)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:32:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9609617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionpower/pseuds/dandelionpower
Summary: Is he a murderer, a revolutionary, a seducer or even a servant of Satan ? Besides being a wanted man and a thief, who is the infamous Highwayman of Cornwall everybody is speculating about? Jim Hawkins knows the man under the mask, but he has good reasons to hold his tongue.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal gratitude goes to Katyushha who helps me improve my English for three years now.
> 
> This story is based on the Prompt #51 of the WintreFRE2017: "The Highwayman (song by Loreena McKennitt) only with a happier ending." Some parts are taken from the song lyrics, so all credits to Mrs McKennith.

Outside, the wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees. The clouds sailed from the face of the orange moon to the core of the sea.

“Hawkins! I’m not paying you to stand there and look out the window!” an authoritarian shout called Jim to order.  

“I’m sorry, Mr Warleggan,” the young man apologized, drawing the kitchen’s curtains shut.  

“Stop being sorry and just do your damn job,” Cary Warleggan admonished the young commis waiter, giving him a blow of his cane to the calves when Jim walked past him through the doorway.

Jim could not do much more than adopt an air of contrition and keep his complains to himself. Obedient, he went behind the bar and rummaged through the dishcloths in the basket under the counter, in order to find one that was used yet clean.

“I’m sorry he’s treating you that way,” Demelza slipped in his ear when she came to the beer barrel to refill the heavy mugs that she balanced with expert ease on a platter in the crook of her arm. A long curl, the color of autumn bonfires, had escaped her linen bonnet and her eyes were weary. She was apologizing to Jim, even though the Warleggans were not treating her any better. If anything, they were ever worse to her.

Jim was sad on her account. At least _he_ had the luxury of hope. Soon, he would get to leave this sorry place and never look back.

He gave Demelza the most sincere smile he could muster. “I’m fine,” he assured her.

She answered with a compassionate nod, but she was gone as fast as she had appeared, her name being called across the room by an inebriate group of merrymakers.

Having found what he was seeking, Jim slung the cloth over his shoulder and went to a table that customers had just left after having wolfed their supper down. He proceeded to clean the bread crumbs and wine stains that marred the oaken surface. The table just behind him was occupied by three men of the local elite: John Treneglos, a wealthy landowner, Doctor Choake, a rural practitioner, and another man he remembered was an attorney at Bodmin county court. They were out of Jim’s field of sight, but he could hear their conversation as if he was sitting among them.  His attention was soon drawn to what they were saying.

“Not only is he a notorious bandit, but he’s an adventurer, a seducer, a wrecker and a murderer,” Doctor Choake affirmed. “Why are the soldiers of the king not doing anything to arrest him?”

“I concur, this is indeed scandalous,” the attorney agreed, “but the man is careful to hide his true identity. The soldiers can’t afford to comb the whole countryside and put every fishy individuals in irons. And even if they did, how can they know they’ve really found the one they’re looking for?”

Their talk was briefly interrupted when Demelza danced around the chairs to bring them more food and wine.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Jim moved his cleaning task to another table, even closer to the trio.

“Aren’t you afraid of the Highwayman of Cornwall, miss?” the attorney, whose name Jim was still not able to recollect, asked Demelza as she set the plates and cups down. “This establishment could well be his next target.”

“He’s a Highwayman, he attacks people on roads, Hammett,” Doctor Choake corrected the lawyer with an audible snort, before Demelza could answer the question originally aimed at her. “I doubt he is going to try his hand on an inn, but we never know. The rabble of miners seem to breed more and more of those felons. These are perilous times, gentlemen,” Choake professed, waving his handkerchief under his nose as if chasing a pungent smell.

“If the man is a seducer, a pretty girl such as yourself should be careful,” Treneglos advised Demelza, leaning into her personal space uninvited.

Jim was battling against an especially tenacious stain on the table, but could not help a smirk from quirking the corner of his lips at the mention of the highwayman being a danger to innocent girls. Jim was in a good position to know that if anybody had to dread the thief’s power of seduction, it would  be not young women.  

Unfortunately for Jim, Dr Choake had the eyes of a hawk. “What are you smiling at, boy?”

“Nothing, sir,” Jim defended himself in a stutter, heat creeping to his cheeks. He pretended to redouble his effort on scrubbing the table to hide his flushed face.  

“I thank you for your concern,” Demelza reassured John Treneglos, brushing off his false worry and flirtatious hints, “but I can handle myself pretty well.”

Jim followed Demelza back to the bar. He grabbed another cloth to dust the top of the counter and shot a glance at the physician. He was glad to see that Choake was now absorbed by the content of his plate and had forgotten about him.  The tension in the waiter’s spine had just started to ease when an empty mug was pushed in front of him.

Sitting at the counter was Jud Paynter, the local drunkard and troublemaker. The old servant was in the middle of entertaining a small group of miners from St-Ann, but he waited until Jim handed him back his mug filled with foamy brown ale before he resumed his narration.  “I’ve seen the Highwayman of Cornwall meself. He’s no legend nor ghost,” he declared. “He’s as real as the nose in the middle o’ my face.”

“If he’s no ghost, how come nobody’s able to catch him?” asked a miner with a long beard and a wool hat.

“He’s swift like a wind gust: sneaky as a snake,” Paynter explained. “He comes up behind you and before you know it: _phit_ , yer dead.”

“I’ve heard that he made a pact with the devil. That’s why his horse blows black smoke through its nostrils,” another miner hissed between rotten teeth.

“It’s all true,” another one added. “The father of my niece’s husband knows someone who told him for sure that the Highwayman was a cripple and that Satan fixed his leg in exchange for his soul.”

Jim rolled his eyes and served the miners another round of beer when they demanded it. As drunk as they all were, the waiter was sure they were not paying any attention to him. He was just the drink provider. Jim had good reasons to let them indulge in tattle-tale and hold his tongue, even if he was the best suited to correct their fallacies. He still wondered what Ross would think if he was there to hear the latest fantasies grinded under the stone of the rumor mill. Jim half-expected to see Ross show up at the old inn tonight, but the dark-haired man was making himself scarce these days. Every time someone pushed the front door, Jim still glanced in that direction, just in case, but the later it got, the more unlikely it was that he would see the familiar scarred face.

One by one, the customers walked out, in various states of intoxication, after having paid or tried begging Cary Warleggan to extend credit. The latter was bound to fail. The owner of the Sawle Inn was a cold and uncompromising man. It was a little past midnight when Warleggan pocketed his money, paid his employees their meagre wage and left them to put the chairs up and wash the floor.

“Go home and let me take care of this,” Jim urged Demelza. He put her cloak around her shoulders to prevent her from protesting. “You’ve worked around the clock without a single break.” Dark auras circled the contour of her feverish eyes and her lips were pale.

“Just like you did,” she pointed out.

“It’s fine, Demelza,” he encouraged her, ushering her toward the door.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I can manage on my own and you need to take some sleep.”

She hesitated, shifted from one foot to the other, but then, she kissed Jim on the cheek, thanked him in a murmur and moved through the door.

Turning around to assess the state of the sticky and muddy floor, Jim heaved a deep sigh.  He risked being beaten by his employer if the floor was nothing short of impeccable the next morning. Getting out of this miserable life was not just a mere wish anymore. At this stage, it was a matter of survival.

Two hours later, Jim’s arms were so sore and stiff from using the brush that he had a hard time moving them and his knees were bruised and blistered by dint of kneeling to the rough floor. As he climbed the stairs leading to his room, carrying a candle to light the way and wincing with every steps, he wondered if he shouldn’t have taken the beating instead after all.

His bedroom was of a decent size, but it was always humid and cold and Jim had no money to furnish it. In absence of a bedframe, the straw mattress was directly on the floor. The only furniture he possessed was the small table where he put the candle down and the chair by the window where he let himself fall. He opened the window and the fresh breeze rolled in, chasing a bit of the stalled air in the room. His gaze wandered along the lines of the landscape. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor. He followed it as far as the darkness allowed him. With a twinge of longing, he hoped to catch the sight of a black horse galloping along the road and a tall man with a tricorn hat riding it up to the old inn door.

“Waiting for someone?” said a deep voice behind Jim, which made him jump out of his skin and rise on his feet, knocking the chair down in his surprise. The question had come from a corner of the room where he had failed to look when he entered the room.  

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph!” Jim cursed, a hand over his thumping heart when he recognized the intruder. “You gave me such a fright!”

“Oh, how come?” Ross asked, stepping out of the shadows with an amused smile playing on his lips. “Are you afraid the infamous Highwayman of Cornwall is going to catch you?”

The intensity of that stare, it had surely unsettled more than one, but Jim knew the worst he risked was arms enfolding him and a kiss to his mouth. He welcomed both of them with a circumspect hum at the back of his throat. “I’m afraid it’s too late. He already caught me,” Jim remarked when Ross inched away to look at his face. “Though I’ve heard that he usually sets his eyes on richer people.”

“I tend to separate business and pleasure,” Ross insinuated, rubbing the tip of his nose along the bridge of Jim’s in a tender gesture.

Jim usually drew so much comfort from Ross’ embrace, but tonight it felt different. The touch unnerved him instead of awakening desire. “And what am I to you?” he asked, knowing his tone to be brisk all of a sudden.  

“Pleasure, of course,” Ross assured him, hazel eyes gleaming with a yearning Jim found himself unable to reciprocate. The older man leant forward for another kiss, but Jim evaded it and Ross’ lips landed on his cheekbone instead. Finding the lack of response to his affection to be unusual, Ross scrutinized his young lover’s face in search of the reason for his trouble. “Did I cause you grief in any way?”

“I missed you. I guess that made me melancholic and bitter somehow,” Jim provided, though it was not quite the reason for his agitation. Ross apparition in the middle of the night seemed to him like a bad omen.

“I rather hear that you are angry for having missed me than because you see me too much and can’t stand my presence anymore,” Ross commented with an easy smile.  

“Am I allowed to know the reason why you’re here at this ungodly hour?” Jim inquired.

“To get a kiss for good luck, my bonny sweetheart,” Ross whispered. His fingers undid the ribbon at the nape of Jim’s neck, setting his blond curls free. “I’m after a prize tonight. The Warleggans are shipping money to London at dawn, but in the meantime, the hoard is in a cart on the docks in Truro, waiting to be carried on board. There are only four men to guard it.  This is a good opportunity to make Cary Warleggan pay for the way he treats you, my dear.”

“I do not doubt your skills, but are you sure this is a good idea?” Jim asked. Now he could identify the source of his discomfort. He was afraid for Ross. “You’ve got yourself quite the reputation already. The whole inn was speaking of you tonight. They depict you as a very dangerous man.”

“They’re right. I _am_ a dangerous man,” Ross answered with a grave frown.

“Folks are also spreading the rumors that you’ve made a pact with the devil.”

This time, Ross laughed instead. “I did. I slaughtered a black rooster on a full moon and I said: ‘Satan, I’ll do your bidding, but please, make the prettiest boy of Cornwall lust for me.’ And do you want to know what he replied?”

Jim remained quiet and unamused.

“He said: ‘Ross, my friend, James Hawkins is such a white dove I can’t corrupt him: you’re going to have to do it yourself.”  

Ross had always been a firebrand. Those dark eyes and the way they gleamed in the light of the candle reminded Jim just how much he had fallen for the inextinguishable passion that burnt in them. But he also feared that this flame of recklessness was also going to be Ross’ downfall, and Jim was no ready to lose him. “You promised me you’d stop thieving,” Jim reminded his lover, stepping away, hands balled into fists. “You promised that soon we would escape together to America. I’m still waiting, Ross,” he flared up. He went to the corner of his room, grabbed a pouch already filled with his clothes and rare belongings and he waved it in front of the other man. “Look! I’m ready! We can run away tonight.” The bag fell at his feet and a second later, he had Ross in his arms again and the pad of his thumb was mapping the crisp stubble of a cheek and jawline. “Please, let’s leave tonight, Ross.”

Ross leant in the touch but he shook his head. “I can’t. I have to do this. The miners are starving, and the Warleggans have made too many people suffer already. They more than deserve what’s coming their way.”

“Can’t you see that I am truly afraid for you?” Jim pleaded. His hand came resting over Ross’ heart. “You could hang for what you’ve done.”

“They’d have to catch me first,” Ross boasted.   

“So it was a lie all along,” Jim realized, growing colder. “The promises you made when you started wooing me, of a better life, a safe life together, these were just empty ones.”  

“Jim, please. You must understand. We need money to embark on a ship to America and buy lands once we are there.”

“You already have money!”

“I gave most of it away to people who needed it more than I did,” Ross sighed. “We got to have a good sum in our pockets to start our life over. I want to see you in fine clothes, not begging on the side of the road with rags on your back.”

“I don’t care about that!” Jim thundered, still making an effort to keep his voice down. There were customers occupying the other rooms just across the hallway. “I don’t want your money! I want you and some peace of mind. But it seems like all you care about is the gold.”

“I love gold,” Ross admitted without shame, “but only when I can pry it from undeserving hands.” His eyes hunted for Jim’s, but his lover still eluded him and put more distance between them. “But it’s not only about us,” Ross continued. “I have to help Demelza and leave her something to live on before we go. She is all alone to take care of six brothers. They are not going to survive for long on the wage your boss is paying her.”

At those words, Jim was stung by a pang of jealousy. “If you want to help Demelza so bad, why don’t you marry her?” he suggested in a sneer, knowing how childish he sounded.

“I can’t marry her. Demelza is like a sister to me. Besides, it would not be fair to her, because I already love someone else.” Ross attempted another approach, stepping slowly toward Jim like a lion tamer. “And I wish I could do something to appease his anger.”

In fact, he did not have to do much. Ross Poldark had been Jim’s greatest weakness from their very first meeting.

“Just promise me you are going to be careful,” Jim said, accepting the hands that seized his hips, “and when you do, you must _mean_ it.”  

“I promise not to be imprudent or foolhardy,” Ross vowed with that soft expression he only showed in private.

Jim sensed their upcoming separation and he brought his head to the taller man’s shoulder. The crook of Ross’ neck smelled of leather, horsehair and freshly cut grass.

“Jim?” Ross asked after a while.

“Yes.”

“It’s late, I must go.”

Jim nodded and he let go to open the window wider for his lover. Ross strode over the window sill and before he climbed down the wall, aided by the thick vines, he brushed a last kiss over Jim’s lips.  

“Come back to me, Ross. It’s all I ask.”

“I will. Watch for me and be prepared. Soon, I’ll return for you, though hell should bar the way.”

 

***

 

Hidden in the shadows of a willow hedge, Cary Warleggan had waited for hours. Frankly, he started to freeze in his fancy boots. The weather was rather cold for the month of June. But when the silhouettes cut out from the darkness by the candlelight came closer to the window in the waiter boy’s room, indicating that Jim was not alone, Warleggan knew his patience was going to be rewarded: 1000 pounds to be accurate. That was the price on the head of the Highwayman of Cornwall.  

An air of triumph was painted over Warleggan’s face when he saw a man exit the inn by the window of Jim’s bedroom and climb down the wall like a thief in the night.

Warleggan turned on his heels and disappeared behind a stone wall. He had no need to spy any longer. He had already recognized the horse that was waiting for his employee’s mysterious visitor, tied a few hundred feet away to an old apple tree. It was Ross Poldark’s black mare.

He had no proof that Poldark was actually the highwayman, but he did not need any. The soldiers were so eager to arrest someone and make an example of it that they would not bother with searching for evidence. Poldark’s reputation as a disturber of the peace was enough to make him arrested, whether he had actually committed the crimes or not.

 

***

 

Sleep did not find Jim after Ross’ departure. The young man stayed seated by the window for the remaining hours until sunset, wishing that Ross would come to his senses and abandon his foolish plans.

Out of habit, Jim started his day of work early, but there was a knot of anxiousness in his guts and his heart rose in his throat every time he saw a shadow pass in front of one of the windows.

Warleggan arrived around nine and he ordered Jim and Demelza to cook for a whole banquet, saying that he expected the inn to be full by noon.  Between them both, Demelza was the cooking genius, so Jim let her direct the operations and he was grateful to only have to follow her lead. His state of worry was making him too distracted to take any good culinary decisions.

He understood why they had to work on preparing food for an army when Captain MacNeil’s soldier troop walked in the front door. At the sight of the twenty red uniforms, Jim went livid. Soldiers had come to the inn before, but never so many of them. They were here for a reason, and Jim was scared that this reason was the man he loved.  

Later, Demelza came back to the kitchen, her hair in a mess and her face red with ire. Captain MacNeil had tried to slip a hand under her skirt. Jim wished he could defend her somehow, but alone against a whole troop, and with Warleggan monitoring his every move, he simply had no chance…. and neither would Ross, if the soldiers found him.

“Are you feeling fine, Jim? You look pale,” Demelza noted.

“I’m-I’m” Jim stuttered, dusting flour from his hands on his apron. “I’m feeling rather unwell, a bit weak. I had a bad night. Could you cover for me a minute? I’ll just go to my room, take some of this fortifying syrup doctor Enys prescribed me,” he lied.

“Yes, of course,” Demelza accepted with a worried crease between her eyebrows.

Jim left his apron on the table and went up the stairs in a hurry. He shut and locked his bedroom door behind him and immediately went for his bag: he had made sure on the morning that everything was ready for a hasty departure. However, when he went for the window, he found out that it had been nailed shut during his absence.

Panic hit him like a ton of bricks.  

Someone had learnt about Ross and him. Someone had seen Ross climb up the wall and use the window to visit him at night. If that same person had made the connection between their nightly encounters and the highway robberies, he was a dead man. He could be tried as an accomplice.

His hands slippery from cold sweat, he attempted to force the window, but to no avail. This would not be an option to slip away. Besides, he could see three soldiers in the courtyard. They seemed to be guarding something: a cart. It had to be the same one that Ross spoke about: the one that contained the Warleggans’ gold. The presence of the cart there was no coincidence, he was sure about it. The soldiers were trying to bait the highwayman: they were aware that he would come for the gold and Jim knew he would come for him. Either way, Ross was in danger.  

Aggressive pounding to the door made Jim’s heart skip a beat.

“Hawkins! I know you’re there, you miserable scoundrel!” Cary Warleggan’s voice barked from the other side. “Unlock that door or I’m asking Captain MacNeil to break it down!”

Before Jim could even move, the Scot officer kicked the door opened and rushed in, Warleggan in his wake. “What is this?” MacNeil asked Jim, snatching the bag from his hands.

Jim only stared back, his eyes wide and his breath short. He should have lied, but he was like a rabbit cornered by a fox. His heart was drumming too hard and fast to let him speak.

“I told you he’d search a way to escape,” Warleggan observed, taking a look at the windows and its nails that Jim had desperately sought to bend and tear out. “He’s in cahoots with Poldark.”

“In that case, we better make sure he doesn’t move from here,” MacNeil agreed. He grasped Jim by the back of his shirt and yanked him down the stairs and toward the kitchen where he was gagged and bound to a chair.  Demelza tried to protest, but she was soon pushed away.

“Stay out of this, woman,” Warleggan ordered her, and she was forced to go back and serve the soldiers more bread and ale.

Hours stretched by like years until sunset and into the night.

MacNeil stood by the kitchen casement, surveying the backyard. “What if he doesn’t come?”

“He will come,” Warleggan assured him, throwing a glance in Jim’s direction. “Trust me, he will. You’ll have the satisfaction to shoot him down on the road like a dog.”

“With all due respect, sir,” MacNeil groaned. “I hope you’re not making me waste my time.”

“What have you to complain about, captain? Your men drank and ate for free,” Warleggan pointed out.  

MacNeil looked like he would say something more, but decided against it at the last second. Instead of quarrelling with his host, he verified that his men had followed his instruction and that he had soldiers ambushed on every strategic points around the inn, prepared to attack and capture the highwayman.

Jim couldn’t help but notice that apart from the soldiers, most of the usual customers had failed to show up tonight, as if they suspected a scheme was afoot. All Jim could think about was Ross- _his_ Ross, running straight into a trap because of him. Ross would certainly renounc e th e money in the cart, if that risked revealing his identity or put him in danger, but he had said he’d come back for Jim _“though hell should bar the way”_ , and Ross Poldark was one to keep his promises.

Jim writhed on the chair every time his keepers were looking away. He had to find a way, any way possible, to warn Ross. He twisted his hands behind him, until his fingers were wet with sweat and blood, but all the knots held good. He was on the verge of adding tears to the mix.

By dint of insisting, the soldier guarding Jim allowed Demelza to take the gag off and make the prisoner drink water from a cup. Jim swallowed down gulps of water with avidity. He was dying to speak to Demelza, to ask for help and beg her to escape the inn and carry a message to Ross, but he could feel several pairs of hostile eyes on both of them.

The gag had just been put back to his mouth when they all heard the front door of the inn flung open. The soldier who just barged in, ran to the kitchen to report, breathless, to his superior. “I think you should come, Captain.”

“What is going on, Davies? Have you seen Poldark?”

“Not exactly, sir,” the soldier corrected. His mouth gave a slight twitch, like the one of somebody who wasn’t sure of whom he should be more scared, between the infamous highwayman and his own commander.

“What do you mean by “not exactly”? You either saw the man or you didn’t.”

“Well, he’s there,” Davies said. Jim’s blood ran cold. “At least I think it’s him, but… he’s not alone.”

“Arscott,” MacNeil hailed the bulky man assigned to guarding Jim. “Untie Hawkins from the chair, but keep his feet and wrists bound together and carry him outside,” he ordered. The named Arscott executed the task without a word. The last thing Jim saw before Arscott brought him out was Demelza hiding inside one of the kitchen’s pantries.  

MacNeil had already aligned his men in two neat rows at the front of the inn, like at the dawn of a battle. Arscott put Jim down from the shoulder where he had slung him like a sack of wheat.

In the night, a growing clamor was climbing to them from the valley below. Jim gaped at the horde of miners and peasants marching toward the inn like an army, under the light of torches and lanterns. They were a hundred men, maybe two: a whole village brandishing stakes and pitchforks. All the faces were anonymous and menacing: masked with various pieces of fabric. At their head, leading the battalion, was a man in a dark coat, mounted on a horse and holding a pistol. The nose, mouth and jawline were hidden by a black scarf and only his eyes were visible: implacable and glowing like brands in the shadow of his tricorn hat.  

The closer they came, the angrier Warleggan got. “It’s him! It’s Poldark! Shoot! Shoot him! Shoot them all!” he yelled to MacNeil.

The nervous soldiers tickled the trigger of their muskets, but MacNeil held a hand up.

“Don’t make a step more, or I order these men to fire,” MacNeil roared.

The leader of the angry horde obeyed and pulled on his reins. He and his followers stopped. The clamor died down.  

Jim stood up-straight and still like a vessel’s figurehead. He wished Ross would look his way, but the highwayman’s attention was on his enemies.

“If your give that order, Captain, you are going to kill some of us, but not all,” Ross pointed out in a loud voice. He could disguise his face but not his voice. “The awful state of poverty they live in: a state that conspirators like you, Mr Warleggan, make sure to keep intact, breeds desperate men, and the ones here tonight don’t have much to lose anymore. You are outnumbered and you know it. If you shoot, you can be sure that I’ll drag at least one of you with me to hell.”

“Hell is indeed the place where you belong, Poldark, you and you race of outlaws,” Warleggan spat, “and that includes Hawkins here.”

Jim flinched when the cold end of a barrel made contact with the back of his neck.

Until now, Ross’ pistol was pointed to the sky, but he lowered his arm and aimed at Warleggan’s head. “Then, it would be the last thing you’d ever do.” His glare was so full of spite that Jim understood how anyone could think he was an acquaintance of the devil. But if he could be harsh and inflexible, Ross had never treated his lover with nothing else than loving devotion.

Warleggan and his opponent gauged one another for long seconds as everybody around held their breath.

Suddenly, someone in the restless horde of villagers shouted something, which scared Ross’ mare that pranced. One of the soldiers shot blindly into the crowd and everything turned to chaos. The crowd following Ross riposted to the provocation, lashing out like one furious pack of hound dogs. MacNeil ordered his men to fire at will, but the miners were unstoppable, jumping over the bodies of their fallen companions to beat and stab the red uniforms.

Ross and Warleggan fired in each other’s direction. The bullet from Ross’ pistol pierced through Warleggan’s jacket and lodged in his shoulder. The one from Warleggan’s hit the mare to the neck. The horse went mad and shook its rider off before galloping away into the moor.

Amongst the mayhem, Jim lost sight of Ross. He was jostled, shoved to the ground and someone stepped on his fingers.

Captain MacNeil, Warleggan and a couple soldiers retreated inside the inn and barricaded there. They were now firing at the villagers through the window shutters.

Jim coughed and his eyes teared up from the dust. “Ro-o-ss,” he croaked. The smell of gunpowder invaded his lungs.

Perhaps he had misinterpreted what he had seen and the bullet had hit Ross instead of the horse. Ross was maybe dying in the dust only a few steps from him, but with the other bodies piling up, the movement and panic around him, he was not able to see anything. Jim started to crawl toward the place where he had last seen him.

He got a hard blow to the head: an involuntary kick of boot that knocked him out for an instant. A firm hand closed around his forearm behind his back, he felt a pressure on his bounded wrists and his hands were free. The ropes around his ankles were cut as well. When he regained his wits and his blurry vision cleared up, he rolled over and he saw them: the large mouth pressed in a thin line, the dark orbs and the long scar that marked without defacing. Ross had lost his tricorn hat. The scarf was around his throat and no longer hid his face.

Some of the villagers still tried to oppose armed resistance to the soldiers, but from inside the inn, the soldiers had the advantage.  By now, most of the crowd had run away, dragged the wounded away to moved to the backyard, where they pillaged the cart containing the Warleggans’ gold.

The gentleness with which Ross cradled Jim’s face was odd in the midst of such violence. “Jimmy. We have to run.”

Ross was the first to get back on his feet and he lifted Jim to a standing position by the back of his shirt and he did not release the hold he had on his clothes when he pushed him to run away from the inn, to the grassy meadow that slopped to the line of the sea cliffs.

Sooner than he would have expected, Jim was out of breath and forced to stop. The thunder of firearms echoed in the distance. At some point, the soldiers would run out of ammunition, if the villagers did not try to burn them alive inside the inn before that. Jim had a fleeting thought for Demelza, still hidden inside. Once again, there was nothing he could do for her.  

Jim clung to his lover’s waistcoat. “Ross… the people who came with you…many of them are dead…”

“I forced no one to follow me,” Ross asserted, though his features bore the sadness and the grief of those losses as well. “They all did it knowing the risks.”

“What do we do now?”

“I have a little boat in a creek not far from here. We’ll row to France and then, we’ll walk or ride to La Rochelle. From there, we’ll be able to get onboard a ship to the New World.”

Dread had not eased its grip around Jim’s stomach, but having Ross close allowed him to keep a cool head, until he found a tear on his lover’s sleeve. “It’s blood,” Jim emitted, in shock, looking at his moist fingers. “You’re bleeding, Ross!”

“It’s a superficial flesh wound,” Ross hastened to reassure him. “The bullet only grazed me.”

“We should go to Doctor Enys.” Jim insisted, feeling weak in the knees. Blood never bothered him before, but to see his lover injured was another thing altogether.

“We have no time for that. They are coming,” Ross stressed, grabbing Jim’s hand in his and dragging him along as they resumed their run.

Jim was unsure whom “they” referred to, until he heard the shouted orders and the clattering of horse hooves. MacNeil and some of his men had found a way to fend their assailants off and fight their way to the inn’s stables. Now they were on their heels.

Ross and Jim left the meadow and made their way through the heather shrubs and rocks along the sea cliffs, heading North. On that field, they had more agility than the horses, but not by much.

The group who pursued them split in two and Jim lost sight of the other half. In the dark, the riders would not take the chance to ride too close to the cliffs, so Ross, Jim’s hand still firmly clasped in his, took the track that meandered at the very edge. He thought it would be their only chance at shaking them off, but this decision proved to be the wrong one when the other half of the riders appeared to their right, forcing them to the rocky spur at the tip of a small peninsula. “We’re not going to make it,” Jim realized as the soldiers were closing on them. They were cornered and trapped. The soldiers would be on them in less than a minute and arrest them or execute them on the spot.

Ross was no looking in the soldiers’ direction, he was staring down, at the waves of the high tide that licked the granite of the sheer drop, and Jim understood at once what he had in mind. He was a good swimmer, and so was Ross, but they had no idea what lay under the surface. The chances a jump would kill them both were high.  

Their eyes met.

“What do you want?” Ross asked, his voice uncharacteristically calm, “Dangle at the end of a rope or take a chance with the ocean?”

Jim gulped, drinking a last time in their shared gaze. “If I have to die, I want it to be with you.”

“Then, we jump,” Ross decided, and the lovers took a leap of faith into the mouth of the open sea.

 

***

 

Never were Ross Poldark and the Highwayman of Cornwall ever seen again. If they had been one and the same is a subject on which the Cornish people are still divided to this day.

Jim Hawkins had vanished without a trace as well. The authorities roamed the coastal line in search for the remains of the fugitives, but after two weeks of fruitless search, the soldiers were called to some other pressing justice matters and Captain MacNeil assumed the fish had done their work and ate the corpses.

The miners of St-Ann had another theory, however. They claim that Satan himself, that night, had taken from the waves what was rightfully his: bodies and souls.

Some stories are made to become legends. The feat of the Highwayman of Cornwall is one of them. Still on some summer nights, they say, when the wind is in the trees; when the moon is a ghostly galleon upon the cloudy ocean, one can see the phantom of the highwayman riding across the moor, with the white road smoking behind him, up to the old inn’s door.

Demelza Carne did not believe in those ghost tales, because, for decades after the highwayman’s disappearance, she kept on receiving bags of silver Spanish _reales_ from an anonymous benefactor, and, with the coins, some grains of this fine white sand that could only be found on the Caribbean islands.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, dearies. As usual, your comments are much appreciated.


End file.
